Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Life Links 11/6/12

The couple on Friday filed a motion asking the state's highest court to halt the proceedings by Washoe County District Judge Egan Walker, saying he lacks authority to make such a decision for their mentally impaired daughter, who officials say has the mental capacity of a 6-year-old.....

The couple, who have remained anonymous, said that as their daughter's legal guardians, they have exclusive authority over her healthcare decisions, and that both they and she want the baby carried to term, in line with their Catholic religious beliefs.

For the past year, Democrats argued Republicans are waging a "war on women" for wanting to make all abortions illegal, while Republicans countered that Democrats don't want any restrictions on abortion. Each side is attempting to paint the other as extreme, hoping to pick up on-the-fence women voters in the process.

But, despite how they're sometimes portrayed in the news media and by political candidates, female voters are about as divided on abortion as men are.

"One of the central myths in American politics is that women are more pro-choice than men," Karen Kaufman, an associate professor at the University of Maryland who has researched the gender gap, told Yahoo News.

Even Judge Andrew Kleinfeld, a reliably conservative jurist appointed to the appeals court by former President George H.W. Bush, said Arizona's law appears to wrongly prohibit abortions before "viability," when the fetus can live outside the womb. Viability is generally considered to occur sometime after 23 weeks of pregnancy. The county's seminal Supreme Court 1973 abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade, said states cannot prohibit abortions outright prior to viability.